"Ever since the Libyan uprising started on 15 February, the foreign media have regurgitated stories of atrocities carried out by Gaddafi's forces.

It is now becoming clear that reputable human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been unable to find evidence for the worst of these.

For instance, they could find no credible witnesses to the mass rapes said to have been ordered by Gaddafi.

Foreign mercenaries supposedly recruited by Gaddafi and shown off to the press were later quietly released when they turned out to be undocumented labourers from central and west Africa."

After arguing that anti-Gaddafi insurgents were adept at using propaganda, he mentions a specific example:

"One story, to which credence was given by the foreign media early on in Benghazi, was that eight to 10 government troops who refused to shoot protesters were executed by their own side. Their bodies were shown on TV.

But Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International, says there is strong evidence for a different explanation. She says amateur video shows them alive after they had been captured, suggesting it was the rebels who killed them."

Cockburn writes:

"It is all credit to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that they have taken a sceptical attitude to atrocities until proven.

Contrast this responsible attitude with that of Hillary Clinton or the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who blithely suggested that Gaddafi was using rape as a weapon of war to punish the rebels."

That is not to say that Gaddafi has not been responsible for any war crimes at all. It is simply the case that some of the allegations assumed to have been true (by journalists, and therefore by readers and viewers across the world) have turned out not to be so.